


Heart Of Stone

by twistedthicket1



Series: Hearts [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Complete, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, john plays piano
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-27
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2017-12-27 19:19:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/982632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedthicket1/pseuds/twistedthicket1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on the vid Heart Of Stone By Avididyfire</p><p>John is content to drown.<br/>It's been nearly three years, and though others might disagree, he is content in the fact that he will never be whole.<br/>It's nothing to be ashamed of, it's okay to be broken. Convinced that nothing will fix him, he makes do with what he has. Tries to live on.<br/>He almost succeeds.<br/>What happens when Sherlock Holmes comes back, and both men realize that it's his return and not his death that might finally shatter them?</p><p>****</p><p>"Believe what you will. Come on, We're going home."</p><p>"No."</p><p>The detective's head snaps around, pale eyes widening in minute surprise and confusion. John however has never been more focused before in his life.  His voice is unwavering, his shoulders soldier-stiff as he refuses to look away from Sherlock's face. His left hand trembles at his side.</p><p>"You have no idea what you've put me through. And I refuse, I refuse to ever let myself feel that way again"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blank Pages

**Author's Note:**

> So this fic was inspired by a fantastic video made by avididyfire:
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaWr9FiuvAU
> 
> I really would advise watching it, although it will obviously contain spoilers to the story. :) I hope you enjoy! remember, comments and kudos are treasured and feed the darkest souls of my plot bunnies....
> 
> also, if you have a prompt or an idea and like my writing, feel free to let me know :)

   

 

 

 

 

  _Can you keep a secret?_

_Will you hold your hand among the flames?_   
_Honey, youre a shipwreck_   
_With your heart of stone_

_Can I get a witness?_   
_To the bruises and the wasted tears_   
_You could dry a river_   
_With your heart of stone_   
_With your heart of stone_

_I can breathe_   
_I can breathe_   
_Water_   
_Water_   
_I can breathe_   
_I can breathe_   
_Water_   
_Water_

_When youre here with me,_   
_Youre not here with me~ Iko, Heart Of Stone_

 

 

It is the sound of running water that makes John want to cringe in his seat.

The sound of it drives him to distraction, his hands curling into clenched fists slowly against the armrest of the chair. It hits him again, like a solid fist at the base of his spine. His eyes flutter closed in pained silence, but they're open again by the time his therapist comes back, now with a glass of water in one hand. He's learned by now how to stop it, before it gets out of hand. He kills the emotion, deadens it until he can assume a mask of blankness that is if not content, is at least neutral in appearance. Still, she looks at him steadily for a long moment before she sets the glass on the table between them, dark brown eyes assessing the tension in his jaw line and hands before she sat down.

 

John is a silent figure, and for those who hadn't known him very long they would be prone to say he forever had an exhausted look on his face. He is a thin man, too thin really, and gives the appearance of someone just a little bit lost inside his own head. His eyes would always inevitably trail away from the person's face with whom he was speaking, those blue irises lingering on a point far away, as if he was seeing something or someone that had vanished long ago. He did not look directly at people, instead opting to drift, to float and gaze at his shoes as he did now, or perhaps at the palms of his hands. Ella Thompson can count on one hand the amount of times that John has actually looked at her since the therapy sessions had started up again almost a year ago, and it is becoming clear that the number would not increase in this session either.

 

John's left hand trembles slightly as he runs his fingers through his hair, once again looking out the window. He refuses to look at the cup that sits innocently before him, at the cool liquid that glistens transparent and harmless. Instead he stares at Ella's folded hands, her fingers looking like a bundle of twigs knotted together, an impossible twisting puzzle to solve. The mystery of hands, how they can reveal so much in a person. At one time, he might not have noticed.

Now, he can't help it.

 

John finds himself noticing these kinds of things again and again, like some switch has been flipped in his mind's eye. He wonders if he can see everything, could pick up as much as he thought he did. He knows that he isn't anywhere near perfect. He'd never be able to.... well.... never be able to copy _him._ His throat tightens at the thought, and he blinks away the constricting viper tightening about his neck as he forces himself through the deductions, unsure if he is even correct. Ella has clean hands, soft from peppermint-scented hand-cream and meticulous attention. John thinks that might mean she was used to keeping up a certain appearance, which would make sense given the nature of her job. Her nails are all the exact same length, polished with dusky pink paint that matched her outfit. She had slight calluses on her forefingers- _played the guitar? Or just a texting addiction?-_ and her fingers did not twitch in the slightest sign of agitation. He wonders what other tells might be there, what is left elusive and unknown to him. What secrets are locked away in the folds of her skin.

But such thoughts only lead down a path he doesn't want to go down, at least not here. Not with eyes he can feel boring into his hairline, and a still pen waiting for the chance to scratch every emotion that crosses his face down onto a spiral pad of paper.

 

“John, I'm here to help you. But I can't help you if you don't _trust_ me.”

 

The words come out of John's mouth, automatic. Mechanical. Words he can apply in many different situations. Impersonal.

“I'm fine. Everything's fine.”

 

Her hands tighten together. Frustration. That much isn't hard to deduce.

_Obvious John, really._

 

Stop.

 

Ella's lips are a thin line. As she shapes the next words she says, John can see in them exasperation. Masked pity. Stony words unsaid.

If he's right at all of course. He still doesn't know. Can't ask. The ability to question things out loud has long since faded from his abilities. It died the day he asked for one more miracle, and got none.

 

Not even a whisper of chance.

 

Her voice is resigned.

“Is it, John?”

 

John doesn't reply. He doesn't have to.

His silence answers for him.

 

***** 

 

 

It rained that day. Like the world had somehow picked up on John's insurmountable grief and sympathized with him, the sky opened up and cried itself out onto all of London. It fell in _sheets_ , threatening to drown anyone in its torrent as it washed away everything like a tidal wave. When his eyes closed, John remembered only that fact from the greyness of that week.

The rain.

How it had felt on his face.

Cold.

Colder than anything he had ever felt before, except perhaps that pale wrist when he had checked desperately for a pulse that wasn't there. It had seemed like London wept bitterly for its lost detective that day, crying for John when he had been too shocked and too numb to shed tears. It wept for the loss of something too important to accurately define, and howled the emptiness that filled the city the day one solitary dark coat stopped tearing down its alleys and streets.

 

Yet no matter how hard it rained, no matter how many days John spent chilled and soaking wet outside late at night, it couldn't wash the feel of Sherlock's blood from his hands.

 

Nothing could change the fact that every night John went to sleep with the vision of a falling figure imprinted behind his eyelids, and woke with the bitter taste of a scream dying on his lips.

 

No one could fix that, and perhaps it was because John didn't want them to fix it.

After all, healing would mean forgetting.

He didn't want to forget.

 

Didn't want to move on.

 

Not when his body would forever be trapped under the pressing waves of grief, even though his eyes stayed bone-dry. Not when the sky itself was allowed to mourn, and he painfully could not.

 

Stuck between wanting to sob until he lost his voice and never wanting to see another drop of water ever again, John closed his eyes and willed himself to fade.

 

And sometimes, in the quiet of the night just before the sun sets on the horizon, washing his living room with an amber glow, he thinks he hears the dying echo of a violin drifting by his ear.

He thinks he can hear a voice murmur to him softly, accusing him and yet filling him with a twisted sense of satisfaction and joy.

 

_I expected better from you._

 

As long as he could imagine that voice, he could pretend he was all right.

That everything was okay and fine.

 

As long as he could remember that face perfectly when he closed his eyes, John Watson would let himself drown.

 

 

*****  

 

 

He walks up the stairs to the flat, and John can already tell who it is by the rhythmic tap of a metal-tipped umbrella marking Mrs. Hudson's steps. He thinks he would recognize that gait even if he were piss drunk, which admittedly he is tonight. He drinks more now than he used to, a change that doesn't always sit well with him if he stops to think too long about it. It seems to John that when he is alone, he is never without the burn of whiskey or scotch on the back of his tongue, heavy and hard. He had always been cautious with alcohol, having it rot away his sister's mind and heart until she was nothing but a dry husk. Empty. Yet a part of John wonders if he was already hollow. He wonders if someone cut him open, what they'd find.

 

What would they see when they'd finish peeling back layer of skin after layer of skin? Was he actually solid any more? Or was that a part of his disguise. A ghost amongst what was solid and true. It feels like that, sometimes. John feels as if he's there, but not actually present. Not like everyone else. He wonders if he ever really was, or if _Sherlock...._

 

If _**He**_ made him present.

 

John supposes it's a strange way of looking at things.

Then again, Sherlock always used to say that out of the two of them, John was by far the stranger one. After all it was one thing to be a sociopath, it was another thing entirely to willingly live with one.

 

_He looks older._

John thinks as he answers the door, Mycroft's lone figure poised unnecessarily in the action of knocking. The government official's eyes are no longer as clear and piercing as they had once appeared to be, dulled with stress, dulled with mourning. Mycroft leans on his umbrella as if it is the only thing that is keeping him standing, and he has lost weight in the past couple of months since John's last laid eyes on him. They stare at each other in silence, always a white noise since John so often doesn't know what to say any more. Like a blanket of snow drifting over a sleeping village, it's cold and burying.

Tranquil from an outsider's view, and crushing from an insider's.

 

For a moment, the ex-soldier considers offering Mycroft drink. However, he decides against it when he sees how the elder Holmes' gaze sweeps over him, lingering on the small stain of scotch on his collar and the way his left hand trembles about the handle of his cane. It is still cutting to John, how much a cursory glance can leave him gasping and wanting to scream, his skin burning with the feeling of eyes that were similar and not alike to the eyes he saw in his darkest nightmares and sweetest dreams. He wants to yell, wants to shout for Mycroft to leave. To just go, because every time John sees the man he wants nothing more than to tear him to pieces and leave him bleeding on the side of the road. Yet the cry can't make its way to his lips, and his expression has long since frozen over into one emotion:

 

Uncaring.

 

Somehow, he thinks Mycroft can still see it. In any case he gives John a wide berth, waiting patiently for him to be invited in instead of just barging ahead like he would have at one point. The doctor is willing to give him that much.

The elder Holmes had learned not to push him.

 

Mycroft seats himself on the couch. The first time he had shown up after The Incident he had tried to sit in the empty chair that sat across from John's. Though John can't remember exactly what he did, he remembers what he said. Or rather, screamed.

 

The echo of _“You don't get that right! You don't get to erase him!”_ still embarrasses him when he's sitting alone, curled up in his own spot and staring fixedly at the empty chair. He wishes he could feel guilty about spitting vitriol at the elder Holmes.

It would make it easier to look at him and realize that he's still mourning in his own way as well.

It might also make John feel perhaps less detached as he sits himself down, not bothering to offer tea. His own stomach is doing flips from drinking on an empty stomach, and Mycroft doesn't look much better. His skin is ghostly pale, almost waxen, and when he finally breaks the silence his voice is a little bit softer than it had once been. John knows what is going to be said. He's known it for a long time.

Which is why he's chosen to get particularly pissed today, despite it being barely noon.

 

“John.... I've been informed that aside from your mandatory therapy sessions, you've barely left the flat.”

 

Predictably, John's eyes lower to Mycroft's hands. They've tightened about the handle of his umbrella, knuckles bleached white by the force of it. It's the only sign that the elder Holmes isn't entirely in control of his emotions. His face and tone are impassive, blank and smooth. He waits for John to reply, and when he doesn't Mycroft sighs and continues on as if he never expected John to say anything at all.

 

“Mrs. Hudson is worried about you.... As is Gregory Lestrade....The inspector's told me that you haven't answered his texts in months. He wouldn't have wanted this, John.”

 

A fact that is purposeful. John had deliberately cut ties with the D.I only a few months after The Incident. He realised quickly that spending any length of time with the man only caused memories to flood him that made John wish he was back in a battlefield, if only to drown out the sound of his beating heart. Gunfire would be preferable any day to the deafening silence of an empty flat, and the screams of strangers would only wound, not tear like the sound of his own ragged shout of _“SHERLOCK!” w_ hen he woke every night in a cold sweat.

Mycroft's steady gaze is like a solid weight on John's shoulders. Threatening to crush him with its commanding presence. However John has survived a war, and he isn't one to flinch away from anything, even a discussion clearly as private and emotionally charged as this one. His jaw firms, and gathering himself just enough to finally look up, he asks the elder Holmes the same questions he asks every time he comes over.

Every time he tries to guilt him.

 

“You never told the truth to begin with, so why should I start believing you now?”

Though John wouldn't have once thought of himself as cruel, it seems he's become so.

Even Mycroft can't totally hide the pained flash in his eyes for a moment before his features smooth over into a mask of serenity.

 

He leaves and doesn't come back.

 

John tries to tell himself he cares.

 

 

 ***** 

 

 

Since Sherlock's death, John has found himself often lingering in his past. Constantly he finds himself retracing his footsteps, lingering backwards in time like the echo of paces of a hangman's walk. Thinking about what he's done, and what he hasn't, and what he could. A lot of time goes into that one, what he _could have done._ Full nights, where the moon hangs heavy on his sleepless form and he stares at the emptiness of his blog, trying to decide what to say.

He hasn't been able to write a word, not a phrase or a sentence in a very long time. Every time the accusing blank page stares at him when he opens his laptop, and every time he stares back, the silence echoing inside of his own mind. How could he summarize his feelings, when he couldn't even feel them under the numbing ice that had frosted over his world? How was he expected to trace words, when it felt like it would be like shedding a skin of indifference and detachment to reality? The action of it threatens to crush him, to make him lose his mind, and so John is silent, mute as he feels the silent pair of green-blue eyes touch the back of his neck.

 

He feels them on him, when he thinks the detective would have disapproved.

And Sherlock, for all of his idiosyncrasies and perception, would not have been able to understand John's hesitation. His fear of losing the only piece of the detective he had left.

So John is silent.

And his therapist continues to urge him to let go.

And he refuses again and again without saying a word.

 

 

At least, that's what it's like at first. Then he reads the comments left behind by others. The lines of hatred, claiming that Sherlock Holmes is a fake. The letters he hasn't dared to open until one night when he's half-smashed and has spent too long staring at the muzzle of his gun.

 

John reads all of them. Looks over every line, let's it sink in and fill him, flood the endless empty feeling in his gut. It consumes him for a moment, and he closes his eyes and writes a single response to all of them, sending it before he can stop to think.

 

_He was my best friend and I will always believe in Sherlock Holmes._

 

He gets over a hundred responses in under an hour.

John doesn't read them, he goes to bed and pretends to sleep, if only so Mrs. Hudson will stop coming up to the flat every other hour and worrying over him.

 

 

 *****  

 

 

Her name is Mary, and she is everything that Sherlock wasn't. She has blonde hair the colour of cornsilk on a summer's afternoon and eyes of deepest, warm blue. She enjoys home-cooked food more than takeaway and doesn't shout or play instruments at odd hours of the night. Her hands are scarred not from chemicals or experiments, but from years of natural labour, her family having grown up on a farm. She likes to read and she's got a sharp sense of humour.

 

And yet she is somehow exactly like him.

There is something in her eyes, something perceptive and just a little bit vulnerable when she looks to John, and he seems to sense that she knows he is broken. Yet she doesn't leave, not like Lestrade and Mycroft and even Mrs. Hudson. In fact, it seems to make her linger, looking at him with interest over the mug of her tea cup at the café they meet. Her tongue is sharp like his, though she doesn't use it to intentionally maim and injure. She uses it instead to ask him out for coffee, and strangely, John accepts.

 

He says yes in the end because when she catches him staring, she doesn't scowl. She merely arches a pale brow, and in a surprising mimicry asks a single question.

“ _Problem?”_

 

He likes her.

He's not sure if it's love, but it's the first feeling he can stir in his chest for nearly three years now, and he clings to it like he's afraid the tiny flame will wither and die in the darkness if he doesn't clutch to it.

He thinks she knows, and that she's known from the moment she looked at him, but it doesn't matter.

It doesn't make a difference, in the end.

Because She's alone too.

 

*****  

 

Despite what Sherlock liked to assume, John does in fact, recognize and enjoy the benefits that come with music. Not that he has any experience with stringed instruments. No, he can't even play a simple tune on the violin. However when he was little, his Mother in an attempt to get him out of the house (and by extension away from his alcoholic Father) had gathered what little money they had and forced him to go to piano lessons. She had gotten a piano from a family friend, and though it was horribly out of tune it had sat for the remainder of Maria Watson's life proudly in the sitting room for all to see. At first, John had hated it. He had initially despised his teacher, a rather grouchy and strict woman from Czechoslovakia and had felt like a pansy sitting in front of the ivory keys, unable to play much asides from _twinkle twinkle little star._ Lessons had been intense, and often he had felt his knuckles aching long into the night as he came home at sunset every week and his shoulders hunched in irritation.

 

John at the age of eight had imagined the homicide of his music teacher in a thousand different ways, and her waspish comments had at first made him at first want to give up. He considered burning his fingers on the stove-top, if only to avoid yet another draining class. He even thought idly about burning the piano itself, once. Like an animal sitting squatly in his house it had mocked him as a child, the noises he drew from it pained and snarling and whining, grating to the ears.

 

Angry, he'd pound on the keys and shout abuse at them when no one else was home, and sometimes he'd even find himself rather comically trying to reason with the instrument, as if it would play a sweeter melody if he only appealed to its softer side.

 

This spat might have spelt the end of a younger John's already woeful musical career, if he hadn't happened to catch Harry, who was five years ahead of him in piano, playing late into the night. When John closes his eyes, he can remember the way he had felt, creeping cautiously down the steps to listen to the haunting melody twisting through the house. Mother had been asleep, and Father had been passed out again, and John had been suffering from nightmares all that week. He could taste the chill in the air, remember how his breath had stood out in wisps in front of his face and how the moon turned his eyes silver in the mirror, his young features staring back at him. He could remember how Harry had looked then, not the small and bruised-looking adult she was today but someone vibrant and cheerful and just a little bit coarse, an edge of something wild to her personality. Her blonde curls had tumbled down her back in waves, her nightgown shimmering in the light of the stars as an achingly sweet tune tumbled from her fingers like cresting waves. He had watched her, tucked away on the bottom step and listening with wide eyes, as his sister had poured her heart out into the piano and the instrument had _obliged._ No horrible sounds, no foul notes, just pure movement and depth into a tune that was unravelling quietly into the night and making John's heart squeeze in his chest so tightly that he hadn't been able to breathe.

 

For the first time, he had caught a glimpse of the deep sadness hiding in his sister's heart. The way the tune was happy and yet seemed forced, painfully playing a part only to stumble back into minor key in the silences in between. A dance she had no hope of completing. A tune that apologized even while still making beautiful mistakes, twisting and curving into a swelling finale that ended with a single, solitary note alone in the darkness.

 

A song of desperation.

 

He'd find out later the name of the song, when he was older and he would find Harry leaned on the same piano, only piss-drunk and crying.

She'd name it after her own saviour as well as her own downfall. Her best friend and lover and one day, worst enemy.

 

_Clara._

 

That was the night that John decided he wanted to play. That he _wanted_ to succeed.

 

So like any Watson, he set to it, stubborn in heart and steadfast despite struggle. Always pressing forward, heedless of consequence.

 

The first time his teacher complimented him, he had managed to play his piece perfectly after only one week practising it.

John would earn many more compliments from other people as he continued on.

 

In fact, he played all through his teenage years, the sensation of his fingers running lovingly down polished keys a sense of gravity weighing him down to Earth. It became a comfort, a single entity in his ever-changing situation. He would play long into the evening, sometimes even during the night. John played the day before he moved out of his home at eighteen, and played the night he found out his sister had nearly hit someone while driving drunk. He had played when he heard the news of his Mother's passing, and had struck out a tune the night before he was to be sent off to Afghanistan.

 

That would be the last song he played for several years, seeing as pianos were scarce to come by in a war zone, and then he went ahead and got himself shot.

Music hadn't seemed important after that.

 

Not much had really.

Nothing except breathing and sleeping and eating and trying to survive when you felt like half of your soul had been torn out by a shrapnel-loaded bomb. Music couldn't stop the nightmares, couldn't drown out the screams of men bleeding out from under your hands and children crying in the streets over the bodies of their parents. Music became lost under the unforgiving hum of London, under the stress of trying to keep together when all John had wanted to do was blow himself to pieces.

 

Music had become lost the second he had lost the thrill of adventure, the taste of action and usefulness on his lips. What good were talented hands, when they couldn't save the ones you had loved most?

He had loved many of his friends in battle, and many of them hadn't ever left the desert.

 

And yet somehow, John did.

John Watson, of _all people_ , managed to survive.

 

At the time, he had almost thought it ironic.

 

He thought the melody would be lost to him forever.

Then he had met Sherlock Holmes, a _symphony_ in human form.

 

The detective had fixated him with bright, blue-green eyes, and said exactly eight words, and somehow.... _somehow_ John heard the music again.

 

_And I said dangerous, and here you are._

 

Like a deaf man suddenly able to hear, he had felt his fingers _itch_ with need and his mind visualize notes across staved paper. To write, to capture the melody that surrounded the strange man in the form of gunpowder and tea and flaring belstaff's and _noise._ Along with his blog, John began to play again, if only in secret from his flatmate at his sister's house late into weekends. He began to build, to construct Sherlock Holmes in sharp notes and flats and quavers. He took the essence of his smile and put it as the melody, the thunder in his irises and made it the bass. John took the elegance of the detective's hands and made them trills across the song, and he swept up Sherlock's height in a dizzying crescendo. He worked and he thought and he laughed at memories, their presence easing the night along when Harry wasn't doing so well and leaving a fond smile gracing his features when he came home.

 

His hands shake sometimes, when he looks at the sheet music that sits in the bottom of the cupboard in his room. The notes lie before him, and he can hear the sound they will make. The tune they will play out, so mournful and yet so lovely. He bites his lip and forces himself to keep the notes, keeps himself from throwing them out into the night air where they will be swallowed by the wind and carried away. He keeps his hands from tearing apart the sheets, instead only allowing them to stroke the edges, trace over the penmanship. He stops himself from playing it, because if he does, he knows what he will hear.

Knows what has been staring at him in the face all along, what he didn't see until it was too late.

 

The thought makes him close his eyes in agony.

 

John will hear what he's known all along.

 

_I'm drowning._

 

That he loved the man, and that no matter what he does, he always will.

_Yet even underwater, he lets me breathe._

 

There was nothing that Sherlock Holmes could have possibly done that could have changed that.

 

Until suddenly, there is.

 

*****  

 

 

It isn't real.

_This isn't real._

_All an illusion, round and round the garden like a teddy bear._

 

But it has to be, or John's lost his mind. Truly, and finally. His stomach is rolling painfully inside of him, and he thinks he might sick up right there, all over the polished floor of Mycroft's Diogene's Club. He grits his teeth, his hands curling against his knees as he looks at the man before him, the one who's about to end his world, destroy it completely. Tear it into shards and watch them scatter. A spider's web falling apart.

 

The elder Holmes watches him carefully, and John knows that in that moment he's no longer numb, because something is twisting painfully inside of his chest, and he cannot get enough air to breathe. It hurts, it is a knife stabbing him again and again and gasoline being poured over an open flame.

 

It is impossible, and yet Mycroft Holmes has the audacity to sit in his chair, fiddling with his umbrella handle and _look_ him in the eye. Those pale blue eyes are calm and _fucking_ regal as they address him, and there isn't even the _hint_ of an apology as the words pass his lips again.

 

John's voice cuts over whatever he is about to say, whatever excuse. Whatever statement that is supposed to deflect the blame. The heavy, crushing blame that must land on _someone_ but still floats up in the air.

 

“So.... it's all been one big _lie._ ”

 

The silence after his words drips like liquid mercury into both of their veins, something flickering in the elder Holmes' steely eyes. He reads the words unsaid between the lines, the words that make his fingers stop fiddling with his umbrella and his spine to hunch slightly as if expecting a blow. Suddenly, the great man appears much smaller, and much more tired than he has before. The words that John is screaming, shouting in his head.

 

He opens his mouth, actually starts, then _stops._

Starts again.

“I never intended.... I never _dreamt_....”

 

Something in John's glare makes the man freeze in place, seeming to think better of the deflection he is just about to let pass his lips. To John's distant amusement, Mycroft's cheeks for just an instant flush with the barest hint of shame before he blinks and gathers himself solemnly.

 

“ _I'm Sorry..”_

 

At one time, John might have believed it. Instead, he is left with only the taste of iron on his lips as he laughs in disbelief, standing as if to go. He resolves that it's not real. That this conversation can be deleted, like Sherlock himself would say. It never happened, because John is not prepared to deal with the repercussions if it's true. He does not believe, _cannot_ believe, because he can feel the numbness fading away, and it's fast being replaced by something that _cannot_ be allowed to exist.

 

Mycroft calls out, and though John doesn't stop, he hears the words addressed to him as clearly as if the man was standing right next to his ear.

 

“He wants to meet you, he's always wanted to.... I asked him to give you time. If you want to see him....there will be a car waiting for you outside the flat every day for a month..... You have until then to decide....”

 

The only response the elder Holmes receives is the sound of John's footsteps matching resolutely away.

 

 

*****  

 

 

Until now, the title of the piece has remained stubbornly blank. No matter how hard John tried, he could never come up with a name for the piece that took up so much of his life, filling it with so much liveliness and colour.

 

A blank page.

 

John goes home and stares at the sheet music for a long time, a cup of tea in his hands turning cold as he becomes lost in memories that hurt so much that he wants to scream.

 

Instead he covers his mouth with the palm of his hand, curling into his chair until he's in a fetal position in the dark of the living room. Shaking apart; John finally, _finally_ feels the tears that have been denied to him for so long begin to streak down his cheeks. Once they start, they can't be stopped. He bites the inside of his hand to muffle the loud, racking sobs that leave him quaking apart. The tears are salty, painful and very much _real._

John can't pretend when he tastes them on his tongue, and instead he cries harder.

 

He cries until it feels like his insides have liquefied, sobs until his eyes burn and he's sure Mrs. Hudson must have to be turning up her telly, to not hear him. John cries and cries, feeling the last, small part of his composure that has been keeping him from becoming an utter mess cracking and turning into sand. The sobs eventually only die to small, hiccuping noises, but don't disappear.

 

When finally he falls into an exhausted sleep, he dreams of that night. The Fall. The funeral.

 

And the flat feels empty and cold, a home abandoned even though its owner rests in its centre. Neglected.

 

John's almost sure he's not imagining it the next morning when he looks outside and sees the black car waiting for him patiently on the kerb.

 

Setting his jaw, he ignores its presence, texting Mary.

_Keep your head above water, keep swimming. It's what you do best._

She replies immediately, agreeing to his proposition to go to the movies on saturday.

 

John tries to pretend he's not spending his entire morning before he goes off to his job staring at the window, sipping his cuppa, his fingers tapping distractedly against the table in a soundless rhythm.

 

_Ignore the water filling your lungs with lead._


	2. Cutting Ties

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Halfway done with this little story :3 thanks again to avidityfire for letting me use their vid as inspiration! one more chapter and then an epilogue. :3 hope you enjoy!!! <3

 

 

  _I can breathe, I can breathe_

_Water, water_

_I can breathe, I can breathe_   
_Water, water_

_When you're here with me_   
_You're not here with me_

_Can I pry your finger_

_From everything I  
Say and do?  _ _~ Iko, Heart Of Stone_

 

 

Two weeks.

In between the raindrops that pound on the window insistently and the beating of his own stuttering heart, John's not sure if he's actually been able to come to a decision at all. The days blur together, and like a college student facing an imminent deadline on the horizon, he keeps pushing the decision away from the forefront of his mind until he can deal with it later. Letting the water shed from his skin without fuss. He keeps telling himself  _tomorrow, face it tomorrow._

 

Tomorrow just turns into the next day, melts into midnight before John can even seriously consider leaving the flat. Before he can manage not screaming the second he wakes up.

 

Because this is a nightmare, and if he gives in to what he so desperately wants to do, he'll make it real.  _Terrifyingly_  real. It will mean that the life he's been living for almost three years, all the grief and paranoia and numbness and  _pain_ will have been a lie.

 

 

_How?_

_How could what I thought be so wrong?_

 

_**You see, but you do not observe.** _

 

He almost jumps when the rumbling voice whispers in his ear, startling him from his numb contemplation of his tea. It's gone cold, but John doesn't much care. It doesn't matter, at least not as much as the memory that flashes in front of his eyes. Running in the cold night air, his entire chest aching pleasantly with the intake of freezing oxygen. It might hurt, if there wasn't a point of light, pulling him along, dragging him into the unknown. He's not afraid, that hand is strong, unyielding. Possessive. It screams  _I won't let you go_ as John is lead down twisting alleyways, the jingle of silver handcuffs clinking between them. The image makes the army doctor's stomach churn, and he sets his cup down with a clatter and stands. Dispelling the image like a curse, John stalks over to the window, wrenching aside the curtain.

 

The car still sits there, black and nondescript. Patient. He spits out a muttered  _“Fuck.”_ Under his breath before letting it fall back into place, spinning around to punch the wall with such shattering force that John feels his knuckles  _ache._ He leans against the hand for support, taking deep, shallow breaths through his mouth. His heart is pounding, throbbing in his ears. He hasn't felt it beat this hard in  _months_ , and it seems horribly ironic that for the first time, he  _wishes_ he can just go back to going numb.

 

Because this,  _this_ hurts so much worse.

John bites his lip hard enough until he can taste blood, coppery and vivid on his tongue. His blue eyes slide closed, his forehead coming to rest against his arm as he considers the options before him, hardly believing that he's actually doing so. He almost calls Mary to ask for her opinion, but a tight feeling in his chest stops him from actually picking up his phone. This seems like something he can't say, not even to her, though he's told her before about Sherlock.

 

It's  _because_ he's told her about him actually, that his fingers hesitate to move. Over the past while, he's taken to telling her about his past, slowly opening up again with her gentle presence and support. Mary is the first person in a long time that John has felt  _comfortable_ discussing the detective with, especially since the media at first had been positively rabid trying to get to the doctor for an interview. He has trust issues, and probably always will, but the reporters had made it worse. They had driven him to a breaking point, until John was scarcely comfortable exchanging small talk with people any more, let alone divulge personal secrets.

 

And he had gifted Mary with his biggest secret of all during their last date, in which he had been recounting with sad fondness the detective's mad brilliance.

 

As she held him, her fingers gently weaving through his hair as they lay in bed, John had finally broken down.

Curling close to her, his lips against her shoulder, he had finally allowed himself to whisper what had eaten away at him from the minute he had witnessed Sherlock's death, what still eats at him now.

 

What is making him get his jacket on, shrugging it onto his shoulders and grabbing his cane.

 

_I loved him._

_I loved him so, so much, and he'll never know._

_He'll never know how much he meant to me._

_How much he still means to me._

 

In the end, John gets in the car. As he does, his therapist's words echo in his mind.

 

_Let go John. You have to Let go._

 

But he can't, and he never has.

Because if he lets it go, he'll drown. The weight of his existence in a world without Sherlock Holmes will drag him down, the pressure will crack his ribs and break his heart. Will leave him choking.

The warmth of that hand will stop reaching for him in his dreams, and all that will be left is cold.

 

 

 

****

 

The battersea power station he is dropped off in leaves John nostalgic with memory. He recognises it without even having to reflect, knowing the empty hallway he walks down because it is the hall he's travelled many times in his mind, wondering if he might have changed the past had he walked differently. It's the warehouse in which he confronted Irene Adler a final time, and the place he'd beg her to tell his best friend of her survival. The walls themselves seem to greet him like an echo, making him recall the words exchanged, whispering in his ear in her voice.

 

_We're not a couple-_

 

_**Yes you are.** _

 

_for the record – if anyone out there still cares, I’m not actually gay_

 

_**Well I. Am. Look at us both.** _

 

He has to close his eyes then, because the words that come next are not what he wants to hear. What he needs.

 

When he opens them again, he is in the main room. For a moment he looks around, admiring the solid infrastructure of the building, hands in his pockets as he resolutely refuses to look ahead. It is silent for a moment as he stands alone in the shadow of the walls, his entire body illuminated with silver tints of light reflecting off steel.

He hears the small intake of air, impossibly loud as John wants to believe he's alone.

That this has all been one large lie. One last joke to really get John Watson going. One last attempt to make him laugh at the twistedness of this world.

 

Instead, his head turns unwillingly towards the noise, breath dying in his chest as a familiar figure steps out from behind a pillar. John feels the blood in his veins freeze, threaten never to move again. His heart tightening painfully in his chest, his hand clenches on air, suddenly wishing to have a cane to lean against.

He can't breathe.

 

Because there, right there is the evidence he's been denying himself for so long, the reason for all of his pain and suffering for nearly three years. The source of all of his agony and every ounce of joy he's ever had in his adult life.

The beginning and the end.

 

_Sherlock._

 

And the detective stands there, curls a little more unruly than usual and his face a little paler than the last time he remembers, but very much  _alive._ So,  _so_ alive.

 

It hurts more then he could have ever imagined.

Like an iron spike being driven into his neck, it's  _agonising._

Because Sherlock  _looks_ at him, and in his face there isn't apology or even any sign of hurt. There is merely an expectation, a knowing that makes John feel as though he's being trampled by a steamroller. The detective's lips turn upwards in a wide smile, and he look at John without a trace of nervousness as he spoke. His voice is laced with pride, as if his friend has done something truly remarkable and fantastic.

 

“You finally came.”

 

John Watson wants to die.

 

****

 

 

 

The first time John had met Irene Adler, he had hated the way she manipulated Sherlock. To most, it would have looked like jealousy, but at first the army doctor had only been furious with the way the dominatrix played with his best friend's heart. Though John himself can't say that he hasn't played the part of casanova (Three Continents Watson being a running joke in the army) he can safely argue that he's never been one to toy with the emotions of others. There is something decidedly wrong with the idea, it never has sat well with the army doctor and it never will.

To purposefully manipulate a person's affections for personal gain.

 

To him, it's something that cannot be forgiven.

 

Except now it looks like that the man he has missed for so long, the  _person_ that he unintentionally loved and lost, has essentially done the one thing that John can absolutely not forgive.

He's played him, and now he stands there like there is nothing to care about in the world, his dark curls glinting in the light softly. Like he has always been there, instead of so far out of reach. Instead of a phantom at the edges of the doctor's vision.

 

Now, the corners of his sight tinge red. Pulsing, thrumming.

They wash over him uncontrollably, stealing his breath away.

 

Because here is the confirmation of his worst fears.

His nightmares.

 

_Sherlock didn't die._

_No._

_Sherlock **left.**_

 

 

And suddenly, everything's tilted, and he has to catch himself as his knees go weak. He cringes in surprise when strong hands make as if to catch him, jerking away from the detective's touch as if it were made of electricity. A harsh

 

“No!”

 

Escapes his lips.

And somehow, it is what keeps repeating itself, even after Sherlock pulls away.

John curls in on himself, the numbness leaving him, bringing with it instead a fiery pain that sears the very insides of his bones.

 

“No.  _No,no,no,no,no_ _ **Jesus**_ _ No-_”

 

And hands are on either side of his face, rubbing soothing circles against his temples, their coolness freezing against his flushed skin. Those blue-green eyes address him with familiarity that the two men no longer have, haven't had for a long time, and Sherlock's voice is steady and sure. John hates how he latches on it to ease his panic.

 

“Shh. It's okay-”

 

John barely realises that he's punched the man until those dark curls are flying back, a cut blooming red across Sherlock's lip, cheek bursting a pale and promising pink. It lessens some of the red in John's vision. He licks his own lips and tightens his fist to keep himself from striking again. Instead he rises unsteadily to his feet, backing away so he can catch his breath.

 

He can't quite seem to though, and as his gasps begin to hitch again Sherlock holds out his hands as if he wants to touch him, but seems to think better of it given past results. His voice is that same low, irritating pitch.

Understanding.

 

Except it is no longer soothing to John, because the last time he heard it was when it was cracking and bidding him farewell.

 

“It's all right now, John, it's  _okay_ -”

 

“ _ **NO IT'S NOT! IT'S NOT OKAY!”**_

 

 

His own voice reverberates and bounces across the building, ringing metallically in his ears, deafening. Almost as deafening as the images flickering behind John's eyelids every time he blinks.

 

_I'm a fake._

_**SHERLOCK!** _

_Goodbye, John._

 

_Jesus.... God, no......_

 

He blinks, and the images melt away, showing him the man that has been the recurring star of both his dreams and nightmares for nearly three years. Like sand running through a sift, his own memories peel themselves apart, layer by layer, the damning evidence too strong to let them hold.

 

And John suddenly realises that watching the person you loved commit suicide wasn't the worst thing in the world, no. The worst thing in the world is realising the person you loved willingly let you  _believe_ they had committed suicide just to win a  _Game._

 

Because that's what whispers in John's ears, Moriarty's voice singing. The madness is like alarms ringing in his head.

 

_That's enough playing, Daddy's had enough now!_

 

It's too much.

God, it's too much. And since John has learned to deal with his emotions by turning them away, that's what he does. His spine stiffens, he forces his breaths to even out. In his head, the military's advice for stress-breathing chants in his mind.

 

_Four Four  Four._

 

He leans on his cane, but doesn't let it become a crutch. Slowly, he turns to face the man before him, chin lifting defiantly, blue eyes flashing. Sherlock gets to his feet, cradling the bruise blossoming along his jaw-line already, green eyes narrowing as he sees that John is not calm at all but in fact, emotionally dead.

 

It is written in his eyes, the blankness of them. It is whispered in the way he looks through the detective instead of directly at him. It is spoken in the way his hand no longer trembles, but his leg still can't fully support his weight. For the first time, Sherlock Holmes sees the John Watson that was created in his absence, and he finds himself looking into the gaze of a stranger. No, not created, returned. For this is John from his War days, back ramrod straight and at attention, and eyes flitting towards all exits before landing on Sherlock.

The narrowing of that gaze speaks one thing only, and it's not the promise of companionship.

 

It is the mistrust given to an enemy.

 

Sherlock finds himself alone in the company of the one person he always expected to be able to come back to.

 

At least, he had always hoped not.

 

Now, he sees that perhaps he should have taken into account something he rarely bothered.

 

_Pain._

 

Because John Watson is in  _pain_ , and it screams in every limb, every stitch, every joint in his body.

So much pain that the detective wonders how he still stands.

 

John wonders it privately, as well.

 

He is even more surprised with himself when he manages to speak.

 

“Three years.  _Three fucking years-_”

His throat closes tightly, hot emotion burning his eyes as he ducks to look at the floor and take in a stuttering breath.

 

Sherlock remains carefully neutral. His face is a mask of ice. Inside, he is counting every bruise he has earned in those three years. Mentally cataloguing every cut, every broken bone, every torture attempt that was done to him.

 

He still feels somehow that John looks more haggard, his expression more wounded. But the detective has been gone for three years, and he's learned to be callous. Learned to be matter-of-fact. Despite the fact that Mycroft's had him relatively rehabilitated back into society, the wilds of the world still ache under his skin. Like a pulse. Like red paint.

 

So he says what first comes to his mind, and it is cutting and cruel and he knows it, as soon as it leaves his mouth.

Accusing like a knife.

 

“I did it for you.”

What he means is

_Let me explain. Please let me explain before you give me that look. I've done so much and been away for so long, and I just want to be near you again._

 

Once upon a time, John might have been able to see that.

He's too angry now.

Too furious at the calm and collected way in which this man is taking his miraculous revival. John snorts, looking away. His eyes are cold.

 

Sherlock arches a dark brow. He realises that he might have to explain further. Here is not the place though. It's cold, and John doesn't seem to be properly dressed. The coat he wears is threadbare, and the detective can tell that it's even worse on the inner lining of it by the way the army doctor shivers.

 

Turning away, he decides this conversation can be held back at the flat.

He says it offhandedly, but doesn't expect he response that follows.

 

“Believe what you will. Come on, we're going home.”

 

_I believe in Sherlock Holmes-_

 

_**“** **No.”** _

 

The word hangs between them, and for a moment, both of them almost imagine it's never been spoken at all. Then John's eyes close, and he sees himself, what the months have made him. The detective's head snaps around, pale eyes widening in minute surprise and confusion. John however has never been more focused before in his life. His voice is unwavering, his shoulders soldier-stiff as he refuses to look away from Sherlock's face. His left hand trembles at his side. Because this is who he is, this broken man, and the person's who's to blame is standing right in front of him, completely remorseless.

Stone.

Cold and detached.

 

And John remembers, and it kills him, how many times he's fallen apart over this still statue.

 

The weeks where he'd do nothing but cry, the hours he spent clutching that useless skull on the mantel like some good luck charm, rubbing his pain and sorrow into it with his fingertips. He remembers that one night, almost a year from Sherlock's death. When his own gun had looked impossibly tempting, glinting in its drawer. How his hands had trembled when he held it between them, and how the only thing that stopped him from going further had been the thought that Sherlock would not have  _wanted_ him to go like that.

And John wants to  _hate_ him. He wants nothing more than to  _despise_ the man standing before him, down to his very bones. His blood boils with it, threatens to overflow.

 

And he _might_  succeed, if he can speak before Sherlock opens his mouth. So John says what's on his mind, blurts out over whatever shocked retort the detective is about to deliver to him. He brutally cuts off all feelings of sentiment, fuelling only the fire that surges in his chest and screams to eat everything whole. The fire that had previously been only doused by grief.

 

“You.... You have no  _idea_ what you've put me through.”

 

Sherlock looks at him, his eyes strangely wide and vulnerable. He looks like he wants to speak, but John doesn't give him a chance.

No more.

No more is he letting Sherlock Holmes have the last word.

 

This, this is  _his_ goodbye, and he suddenly wants nothing more than to make sure the detective never forgets it, that he is never able to erase the tired look of grief that is on John's face from his stupid Mind-Palace.

 

“I  _mourned_ you Sherlock. I watched you  _jump_ from a bloody building, the entire time sobbing to me about how you were a fake. I watched how the blood pooled on the pavement,  _it stained my clothes_ and my hands, and no amount of washing them could get them clean. I lived for  _three years._ _ **Three damn years**_ living with the fact that I couldn't talk you down-”

 

“Moriarty-”

 

Sherlock rasps, but John shouts over him, refusing to ever,  _ever_ hear that name in his presence again.

 

“Don't you  _dare!_ ”

 

Sherlock's mouth falls shut, his lips thinning to a pale line. The detective, cowed by the invalided soldier. Though John is shorter, he seems to suddenly fill the room with his presence, cause the taller man to shrink away from his unbridled rage. He thinks of how helpless he's felt in Ella's office, how empty.

He thinks about how he can't even kiss Mary without seeing Sherlock's face, without hearing his voice in her dry jokes.

 

He thinks about how this man has taken  _everything_ away from him, even his life.

Most of all, he thinks about how he absolutely will  _not_ just give it back to the detective, never again.

No.

_Never._

 

“And I refuse, I  _refuse_ to ever let myself feel that way again.”

 

Sherlock is silent, seemingly startled into muteness. It's a first. John almost wants to laugh. Instead he sighs, the breath leaving him all in one rush. He slumps forward, leaning on his cane as his fingers flutter about the handle, stiff from his grip.

His blue eyes cool to numbness, the encroaching drowning feeling returning to him, blissful detachment allowing him to say what he needs to say next.

 

What he's needed to say for a long, long time, but hasn't been able to.

 

What he murmurs despite the fact that his heart is cracking beyond repair yet again.

 

“As far as I'm concerned, you died that day.”

 

And Sherlock looks at him, face pale, eyebrows drawn together in marked confusion and slight distress. But John doesn't care, because he's already turning away. Already cutting himself off. It's too much to feel, too much to say.

 

Too much left unsaid. His voice is thick with his farewell, but he refuses to let it tremble. Refuses to let it break.

 

Refuses to let it reflect the shattering he feels inside, like he's parting an organ still-beating from inside his rib cage.

 

 

“I  _never_  want to see you again.”

 

And then Sherlock finds his words, and he manages a strangled-sounding

“ _John-”_

 

But the army doctor is already drowning, his head being capped again by the waves. He does not turn around, and the detective doesn't dare follow him. Everything is silver and white, metallic and cool.

 

Except for Sherlock, who is a spot of darkness in the otherwise clear colours of the building.

 

A shadow, forgotten or left behind.

 


	3. Notes Filled In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whelp, here is the last chapter before the epilogue :3 This has been a lot of fun to write, and I can't wait to finish off with the reunion of the two boys. :D Thanks again so much to avidityfire for letting me write this! I am forever grateful! :3 Thanks also to all the lovely kudos and comments. :)

 

 

 

  
_And I just can't forget you_   
_And your heart of stone_

_I can breathe_   
_I can breathe water, water_   
_I can breathe_   
_I can breathe water, water_   
_I can breathe_   
_I can breathe water, water~ Iko, Heart Of Stone_

 

 

He never intended for things to turn out like this.

 

Then again, even Sherlock Holmes supposes that his plans have a margin for error. Room for mistakes. He had known from the start that this, his return, had many potential flaws to it. Anything could happen. The media catching wind of it too early, Mycroft's people being unable to protect him while he was tracking Sebastian Moran. Anything.

 

He knows even as he stands still in the quiet of night that he should have been able to predict this, seen it coming somehow. That there would have had to have been some microscopic clue, a piece of evidence leading to this conclusion.

He knows he should chase after John, grab his arm, try to explain. A very real part of him actually demands it of him,  _screams_ it in panic as he sees the army doctor slowly turn and march away from him. A corner of his mind shouts out, scrabbling to hold onto all it's worked for these past three years,  _begs_ the prize of John's presence not to go without letting him properly explain.

 

He doesn't.

He is frozen to the spot because months of living on his own has hardened Sherlock, made him unmalleable and unmoving. Once upon a time, the detective would have scowled, would have fussed and shouted and all but bodily dragged John back, but instead all Sherlock could see was the things he had been made to endure.

Torture.

Beatings.

Murder that painted his vision red and blue. John is already angry, what will he think of him if Sherlock calls him back, tries to explain?

 

 

It makes him hesitate, pause for a second and try to imagine the outcome. All he can see is disgust, hatred, and the thought makes Sherlock's stomach curdle in horror. So his teeth come to bite his tongue savagely, even as his brain racks itself for a solution, any solution to prevent  _this._

 

However, all that seems to come out is  _“John.”_

 

And though he calls his name, the army soldier doesn't once turn around.

Not even to say goodbye.

 

****

The music doesn't flow. He sits on the bench for a long time, fingers running up and down the ivory keys, and yet the flat is silent and ghostly. Lonely. John's noticed the long quiet of the place before, but somehow now it rings more heavily. Thicker. Like an oppressive cloud it smothers him, sucking the air from his lungs and leaving only ice. It is like the walls themselves mourn for their lost owner, cry for the sound of gunshots and deductions at mad hours of the night.

 

Yet he seems to be the only one that notices it.

She is a speck of colour in the greyness of the place, a drop of sunshine gold as she hums to herself while counting the threads to the stitches of her knitting. Mary's quite good at knitting actually, and like a lemon drop her dress is a splotch of bright against the muted tones of the flat. John tells himself it adds warmth, instead of the part of his chest that screams that all of this is  _wrong._

 

It's been a week.

 

The distant sound of the crowds outside of  _ **221 B**_ are still audible, even at this time of night. John can hear their voices, the questions shouted up at the flat all reflections of the inner questions he holds inside of himself. They tear at him, despite the fact that from his own hands  _Alla Turca _spills forth, lively and marching in order to drown them out. It seems to be the only thing he  _can_ play, something proud and ostentatious in order to fill the void of space that has been plaguing John silently ever since his ex-friend's astonishing return.

 

The void that somehow, is at once alleviated and aggravated by Mary's presence. He sighs sharply through his nose, realising the direction his thoughts have happened to go down. Standing, John makes to go pour himself a cuppa and possibly distract himself with some mindless telly.

 

He is better without....Without Sherlock Holmes.

Everyone has said so.

 

Greg shouted it at the darkly-curled man, barely held back by John of all people when they happened to cross paths at the yard. Mycroft alluded to it, in simpering smiles and strange, Sherlockian turns of phrase. Even Molly, normal, gentle Molly, who had been rather roped into the entire fiasco of Sherlock's return, hadn't been able to look him in the eye and give him a reason to go back to the man.

 

His therapist had all but thinly forbade it.

 

The word  _damaging_ had been tossed about more than once in reference to their past relationship.

 

John now finds himself thinking the term more than once as he contemplates the mess the detective has made. The mess he has begun to once again accepting into his life. His head shakes sharply, and before he realises it he's on his feet Mary gives him a small, gentle smile. She knows his thoughts are a bit distracted. She doesn't hold it against him, even though a part of John believes she should.

 

But these thoughts do him no good, and he walks away from the piano, letting its silence speak for him. John tries to pretend it doesn't feel like it's swallowing him whole.

 

****

John finds the photograph while cleaning out the flat. He can't live there any more, not when it's so very obviously belongs to someone else. He talked it out with Mary, and with her agreement, decided to tell Mycroft that Sherlock could have it, if he so chose. Either way, he and his girlfriend were moving out. He is standing in the empty living room, hands in his pockets uselessly as he looks at the room that was once filled with life. Once filled with colour. Now it seems as if it's sleeping, dreaming like the city outside is. Except it will not reawaken with spring. No, not in the way it used to. John can feel it in the chafe of his clothes, sense it in the very walls. Too much has happened, even the dust feels different underneath his finger-tips. Too many tears have been shed here, too many memories laid down and then systematically destroyed.

 

The photograph lies on the floor, perhaps forgotten. More likely Mary left it behind for him to choose what to with as he so pleased. With a trembling hand, John lifts it, a wave of emotion flowing through him at just who looks back at him. It's one of the few good pictures he had of their time together. Before.... Well before everything fell apart like his sister at a wedding. Really, it's more of a clipping from a newspaper. Sherlock stands, looking decidedly uncomfortable and at attention, that horrible deerstalker crushed over the top of his head. His eyes are blazing with good-natured murderous intent as he looks to John, who is grinning just a little bit mischievously into the lens. One arm is wrapped about the detective, pressed so that they stand side by side.

 

The ease and familiarity between them pulls at John's chest, and he blinks furiously to clear the hot emotion burning at the back of his throat. With shaking fingers, his hands brush across Sherlock's alabaster face. Over the symmetry of those cheekbones.

John tries to feel like he's not making a bad choice when instead of tearing the picture in two, he folds it delicately. The slip of it into his front pocket is a welcome weight, no heavier than the weight in his heart.

With the last remnant of his past life gone from the flat,  _ **221 B**_ is no more. It still stands, but it is an empty place, as frozen over as the soil in a garden. John's face is as austere as he says goodbye to Mrs Hudson, who tearfully tells him to “take care of his Mary and himself”.

The last piece of Sherlock's connection to John is in his pocket, and in his heart. The song that will not move to his fingers. The tune that will not play.

The sad and mournful movement, with no real beginning, and a terrible, terrible end.

 

****

In the darkness, she touches his face. Kisses it. John leans into Mary's warmth, seeking it even as the shakings of his latest nightmare tremble through him. He can't breathe. Can't speak. Everything comes out as a cross between a sob and a scream. She doesn't tell him to stop. Doesn't tell him that he's wrong for shamefully wishing that someone else could be in the room. Instead she looks at him, and understands, and holds him in silent comfort. If she notices how John later leaves the bed to write a few more bars of music for The Song, she doesn't say. Instead she merely falls asleep listening to the sad melody. Memorizing its flavour and taste. John's written music for her before.

None have ever sounded so heartbreakingly beautiful.

None leave her haunted for the rest of the night.

None have ever made her believe that a heart could be burned beyond repair and yet still keep on beating away.

 

She does not blame John.

Even though John thinks that she should.

 

 

 

****

Three months come with a Winter's chill, settling into the very bones of London. Embracing London with her frosted kiss. It's the kind of cold that makes a person tremble in their skin, the breath from their lips trail from them in wispy clouds of fogged white. The kind that causes a man who's giving up smoking to smoke, the kind that made even the feeble light of a cigarette a comfort in the dark.

 

Sherlock stands alone.

 

The chill in front of Baker Street is at once an old friend as it is a stranger to him, the darkness revealing the stars overhead like silver haloes over London. Even his breath is frosted over with it, and it curls about him like the smoke from the light in his hand as he cups it to his lips and inhales deeply. His other hand is in his pocket, gloved fingers brushing almost thoughtfully against the vanilla edge of an envelope. He does it almost subconsciously, blue eyes glowing as he gazes out at the traffic in front of his flat.

 

It's been nearly a month since he moved back in. Mrs. Hudson finally put her foot down to his smoking indoors. The flat still smells of cigarettes, but Sherlock doesn't really have the heart to tell her. It seem everything lately lingers with the smell of tobacco and formaldehyde. Chemicals coat his skin. It's a distraction from his thoughts, that bubble and churn chaotically like excited electrons without anything holding them in place. He thinks that if he could see each one, laid out before him, it'd be a tangled web. One frozen over.

Because Sherlock's thought process hadn't moved since  _that day_ , and he didn't really know what to do to get it started up again.

 

Sure, it is still functioning, still  _turning things over_ , but most of it is currently dedicated to a constant replay of  _John_ , and that in itself is strangely painful as it is distracting. It runs in circles like a rabid dog, thoughts eating at each other until Sherlock can imagine they are bleeding and ragged. So he smokes in an attempt to ease and confuse them, stop their mindless destruction.

He smokes because he has nothing to do.

No one to talk to.

He smokes because no one can tell him to stop.

 

He smokes because he can.

 

Of course, he tells himself that he knew it to be too good to be true when no one comes to stop his silent reflection. As the sleek black car pulls up to him, Sherlock rolls his eyes and blows a smoke ring out into the night air. It's just like Mycroft to check on him, just like his brother to  _know._ In typical Holmesian flair for the dramatic, the detective pops his collar against both the chill and the confrontation he knows he will soon engage in, eyes refusing to acknowledge Mycroft even as he steps out of the car.

 

The rhythmic sound of his umbrella tapping the pavement holds a wealth of memory for Sherlock. He knows its sound intimately, and over the years has come to associate it with two things: Bad news and irritating business. It had been the warning to appear sober in his drug years, the sound of a siren before he was to be kidnapped and forced to work for the government. Eventually, it had even meant that John would soon be scowling and muttering for hours later on in the day.

 

Now it holds the promise of something worse than any lecture. It holds the hope of  _comfort_ , and Sherlock finds it wholly disgusting. He does not look his brother in the eye, ignoring the ache in his chest as he flicks ashes onto the ground below. It's cold. The detective pretends the shiver he feels wrack his system is due to that as opposed to the memory of callused hands plucking a cigarette from his lips and crushing it under their heel.

 

Mycroft doesn't bother. He merely stands in front of him, the silence stretching outward until his brother finally sighs and states

“You haven't been sleeping.”

 

Sherlock doesn't bother to deign that with an answer. He continues to smoke, coldly oblivious to the man in the suit before him. When he blinks, he sees another face. One smiling as warm as the sun. It makes the wind blowing through him feel colder. His brother makes a noise of frustration, reaching out to touch the man's shoulder. The detective moves away from the contact without comment. The growl of annoyance in Mycroft's tone is faint but definitely there.

 

“Sherlock, you  _can't_ run away from this...You need to let him go.”

 

And  _that_  stung. Sherlock glares at Mycroft, dropping his cigarette to ground it out with his heel before turning as if to stalk away. However the elder Holmes refuses to be shunned, calling after him in exasperation.

 

“He's getting  _married_ Sherlock!”

 

The man halts. His eyes close as his brother's voice washes over him, stupidly smug over getting Sherlock Holmes to actually pause for breath.

“He's getting married... and he gave you an invite. And you need to let him go.”

 

Sherlock swallows. Suddenly, the weight of the envelope is like lead in his pocket. It threatens to capsize him, invites his emotions to boil inside of him in a way he's never before experienced. For just a second, the detective cannot breathe.

He hears his own voice as if it's from underwater. As if he is not really the one speaking.

 

“Caring is not an advantage....”

 

Mycroft's voice is strangely sad.

“And yet it seems caring makes you.... _better._ ”

 

_I'm just your friend._

 

_**I never want to see you again.** _

 

Sherlock's voice is as soft as the snow that falls softly about him, bringing with it a festive cheer that feels false and wrong on his skin. Numb.

“He doesn't want me there.”

His voice is hoarse and raspy, not at all like the calm pool the detective wishes it would be. As he leaves, he lights another cigarette, the itching back in his fingers. In his mind. It feels like it will never go away as he leaves this confrontation. The last words his brother says to him are tinged with regret, something unnamable that does not speak of Mycroft Holmes. Sherlock pretends he doesn't notice, flicking hot ash onto the pavement below.

 

“Then why would he invite you in the first place?”

 

The detective doesn't have an answer.

Only memories, dancing along his vision like carefully stacked cards set to shuffle.

 

_The name is Sherlock Holmes...._

_The police don't consult amateurs...._

 

_**SHERLOCK!** _

 

_I refuse, I **refuse** to ever let myself feel that way again...._

 

_**Goodbye, John.** _

 

Except Sherlock had never thought that his farewell would be his last.

 

****

 

He stands at the gravesite alone. There's a thin layer of snow, but John's managed to clear most of it away. Instinct, even though the polished stone no longer means anything. Even though there is no one beneath his feet. It's a cold winter's morning, he shivers as he hunches underneath the shaded tree, breath streaming from his lips. He's not really sure what's made him come here.

 

Not really sure why his feet lead him to the place he least wanted to be.

 

The cemetery is silent this early in the day. Not even the birds sing, and John feels the crunch of snow underfoot like a familiar friend. It's somehow reassuring to see his own imprints in the snow, if only to tell himself that he didn't just blink and appear here. That he actually made the choice.

 

Mary in the end convinced him to send the invite. Her words swim in his mind now, twisting his emotions and feelings into a jumbled and sharp mess. They seem to goad him, making a dull pink flush to his cheeks in shame even as he clenches his jaw and hands at his side.

 

“ _He was your best friend, John. You can't just simply erase him from your life. You can't keep doing this.”_

 

“ _ **Can't I?”**_

 

He had responded. The look she had given him over her cup of tea had been scorching and searching. Her voice had taken on a surprisingly Sherlockian poignancy.

 

“ _No. You can't. You still dream of him, did you know? You call out his name sometimes... You cry in your sleep.”_

 

John flinches at the memory of what those words had done to him, running his hand over the back of his neck. Mary had been right of course. He still dreamed of Sherlock. Still dreamed of that day on the bloody roof. Still envisioned the sensation of his body hitting the pavement, the sound of the sickening crack it made. Still, he had been defensive.

 

“ _ **That's why I have to do it, don't you see love? Everything... Everything for so long has been all about him. I can't do this any more... I can't.... I can't have him continue to haunt my life. Not when it's obvious-”**_

 

When it was painfully obvious that Sherlock never viewed their friendship as anything more than something to be used. Something to toy with. Still, Mary had refused to be moved. John argued, John pleaded, John very nearly  _begged_ , but in the end he had sent the damn invitation.

 

So now he stands before an empty grave, chest heaving in sudden and violent rage, only to have the anger quickly capsized by a weariness so heavy he nearly lets his knees buckle. His hand lifts to rub across his eyes, the exhaustion clawing at him like a noose. When had this... all of this... gone so horribly, horribly  _wrong?_

 

His mind whispers, answering the question for him.

_**Moriarty.** _

The name makes John want to shout with rage. He wants to suddenly destroy the headstone before him, strike the name clean off of it. He wants to tear apart that cat-like grin that teases his mind with his bare hands. Instead he stands taller, gritting his teeth as the breath leaves him in a rush.

 

_**It's all his fault.** _

 

And John wishes just for a moment that the madman was still alive, if only so he could murder him himself. But like all the rage he feels sometimes at Moriarty and at the world and at himself, without fuel it soon turns to ash in his mouth, and he's left trembling and without an outlet.

Cold.

 

Because anger can only last for so long, and then it only became guilt and pain.

 

And John was so,  _so_ tired of being in pain.

 

And coming unbidden to him, the soldier remembers when he felt whole and complete, when he could easily let a smile come to his lips and when he could run without it feeling like a knife was lodged in his side. The only problem was, all of those memories involved a man he had told that he never wanted to see again.

 

Sherlock always thought him to be a terrible liar, but the truth was John Watson's greatest gift and curse was the ability he had to lie to himself.

 

But even that runs out, and now he's left facing the cold facts.

 

_He misses Sherlock Holmes._

 

And with the engagement ring weighing heavily on his finger, John has to blink back hot tears. Because he told the only person he'd ever wanted, the only person he'd still gladly  _shoot someone_ for, that he hated him.

 

And he never felt like such a colossal dick. Or like such a liar.

 

He nods to the headstone, a silent promise.

If Sherlock comes to his wedding, he'll talk to him. Try to repair their friendship. Because even though John can never have... never  _think_ about having what he really wants, a friendship is better than nothing. Because being friends with Sherlock Holmes is like trying to kiss a lightning bolt.

 

It burns.  _God_ it burns, but it's beautiful and bright and  _brilliant._ It makes everything dazzlingly confusing and yet so sharply edged and  _clear._

 

And the sensation of it is something that never leaves you. Something you can't ever forget.

Try as John might.

 

 

****

 

 

And so, three months pass.

 

The media slowly turns in Sherlock's favour again, with the help of Lestrade and, surprisingly enough, one Jeoff Anderson and Sally Donovan. John finds graffiti occasionally sprayed on the bricks by his house, the yellow paint dripping with big smiley faces and  _I BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES _scrawled haphazardly underneath. Despite his own reservations, he has to grin at least a little bit. The git did always love a grand entrance, and it seemed that this time, Sherlock would get his wish.

 

Once, John catches a glimpse of him on the telly. He looks well enough, perhaps a bit too thin. He doesn't smile at the camera as usual, and doesn't answer the media's frantic questions.

 

John smiles, even if the ache in his chest is still there. It's slowly healing, if only because he's choosing to ignore it.

 

A week before the wedding, he manages to finish the song. It's not perfect, but it's honest.

It ends with a repeat.

The melody that never truly ends.

 

The wedding day feels close, and yet so far from John Watson's mind.

A part of him is afraid.

A part of him has never been more sure of anything in his life.

 

****

 

Sherlock can't sleep.

But that's normal.

It seems sleep is difficult to find when every time one closes their eyes they see someone they thought would be just around the corner.

In the darkness, he thinks he might understand John's suffering.

 

Because even though John is very much alive, to Sherlock it feels like the Watson he once knew has died.

 

The flat is quiet.

Solitary.

No longer filled with the warmth of one best friend.

 

Sherlock can't help but wonder when it was that the place began to feel like a home to him, and when it was that it stopped and became a stranger merely letting him stay the night.

 

 

****

 

Spring has come in full force, painting everything in lush greens and golds. There is the taste of warm wine and the promise of summer in the air, and an overall feeling of cheer. John adjusts his bow-tie for the dozenth time that day, staring at his reflection. He scarcely dares to breathe.

 

Today is the day.

 

A tremor of butterflies fills his stomach, and for an instant he feels like a schoolboy again. Young and clumsy. Swallowing, he reaches the flap of the tent to peek out at the crowd, scarcely believing that what he sees is real.

The wedding has almost begun.

It was Mary's idea to do it outside, her love for the flowers in the field in which the wedding was being held fuelling her desire. John has to admit to himself as he looks out on the crowd that it was a good idea, their petals creating a cloying and yet still pleasant scent. He can see Greg, standing amongst some of Mary's relatives. He spots John's gaze from the tent and grins, wordlessly giving him a thumbs up before downing a flute of champagne. Beside him, Molly is latched to his arm, looking for once calm and happy and rather pretty in the blue dress she wears.

 

John wishes their happiness could dispel the butterflies that fill his stomach like bubbling soda pop. He vaguely wonders if it's possible to faint from anticipation alone.

 

A part of him, though very small, keeps half an eye out for a curled head.

 

He sees none.

Sherlock it appears took John's words to heart.

John tells himself that's a good thing.

 

 

****

He watches the event unfold like a sleepwalker, ducked behind a solid tree. Watches as the bride comes in (and _oh_  she's quite beautiful even he must admit that and not to mention her smile is sickeningly honest just like  _his-_ ) and kisses the cheek of her bridesmaid (a family relative he's quite sure) and stand beside John. Sherlock listens on the balls of his feet, half poised to run even as he tugs half-heartedly on the bow-tie that constricts about his throat. He's not entirely sure what's brought him here.

No.

That is false.

 

He knows  _exactly who_ has brought him here.

 

He's standing after all, almost directly in Sherlock's line of sight. The detective can scarcely breathe even as he takes in John Watson's figure. It's seems like it's been an eternity since he's been able to drink it in, and yet his ex-friend and flatmate has changed. Like a painting after it's been touched up, John is a glowing, healthier image than the broken man Sherlock watched walk away three or four months before. He smiles as he takes in his bride, the kind of full, unabashed grin that makes warmth and pain wash over Sherlock's chest in equal measures. Warmth because he didn't kill it with all of his lies and deceit, and pain because it's not directed at him but someone else.

 

The ex-army doctor cuts a flattering figure in his suit, all sharp and clean lines. In his breast pocket is a simple flower, meant to compliment his bride's bouquet. Standing side by side, they really do look like a couple made perfect. Two sides of one coin. She stands in her flowing white dress, hair beaded with white ribbons and lipstick red as the roses in the field. John takes her hand, and their twin rings glint in the sun. A sign of the promise towards each other given today. And though Sherlock finds himself happy that John is happy, he also finds a tightening in his throat that won't go away. A choking sensation, a desperate woundedness that makes him wish he could turn and look away. Yet he can't. He cannot stop looking, no matter how hard he tries.

 

Because this may be the last time he ever sees John, and behind that tree, Sherlock can admit to himself what he's been lying about all along.

 

That John more than just  _matters_ to him.

That somehow, over the course of three years, John became his  _world._

 

And now that's being torn away, and for the first time in a very long while, the detective is speechless with pain. Because there is no way he can fix this, it is far too late to change anything. Yet his thoughts scream at him to do so, despite the impossibility of it all.

 

Instead he lets himself sit behind the tree, listening blankly to the sounds of partying and cheer and vows. And if his hands tremble when he hears a certain voice murmur  _“I do.”_ well, he pretends it doesn't matter. He can pretend for John's sake if no one else's that he is fine.

That there is no heart tearing itself into pieces inside of his ribs.

 

That there never was.

 

 

****

 

It's evening before the final part of the reception begins. Mary had suggested the final act of the “show” per se be something of John's choosing. After all, the wedding had been mostly for her, not that he minded. So he finds himself sitting at a polished black piano in front of his friends, going over the sheet music one final time before taking a deep breath. He wrote one for her. It's not as detailed, not as.... _pressing_ as the one he wants to play, but it holds no similarities to Sherlock's melody. It's airy, bright. Filled with promises of the future. As he grins at his mates (Bill Murray, Mike Stamford and Greg all in the front seats) he finds himself suddenly pleased that no curly-haired detective showed. Though at first his absence had been a little disappointing, John suddenly knew that if the man had been around, playing would have been a thousand times more difficult. Especially if those sea-blue eyes had been pinned on him the entire time.

 

Loosening his bow-tie free from its place, he spares one more look at the crowd. Yet it's only one face he's searching for. One he knows he will not ever see. Finally, he looks to his new bride, and her smile is warm. Encouraging. She knows what's going on his head right now, and doesn't hold it against him. Somehow, John feels both guilty and freed by that upturn of lips.

He really doesn't deserve her.

But then again, he's known that from the very start.

 

He plays.

 

The tune streams from his fingertips effortlessly, flowing over the crowd of people in a wonderful and complex melody. John plays his love for the woman by his side, pours out the joy he feels over this event (because he  _is_ enjoying himself, even though he might be a bit preoccupied) and lets the music reach a dizzying crescendo before falling silent on a sugar-sweet bright chord.

 

And when after a moment of stunned silence the crowd roars its approval and begs for an encore, John prepares to play a wedding march. Something light and silly maybe after.

Instead he looks up, and his breath catches in his throat. Because in the dark distance, by a large oak tree, he sees a shadow of a man.

Though he knows he shouldn't recognise him by silhouette alone, the good doctor can.

 

And his fingers defy him, and play a different tune entirely upon catching a glimpse of that face.

 

 _ **Sherlock's Song**_ pours from him, and looking back, John doesn't think he could have stopped it, even if he had tried.

By the time he finishes playing, the shadow has gone.

 

But John knows.

And he's not sure if the beating of his heart means  _thank you_ , or if it means  _please, come back._

 

****

 

It is only once he is in the safety of his own car, that Sherlock admits it. Lets himself say it, alone and whispered to only himself. It is only in the silence of loneliness that the detective can say the words he's always wanted to say. What he's always known.

 

_I love him. I've loved him from the first time I met him. And I always will._

 

And it's only when he's admitted that, that Sherlock finally allows himself to cry. Cry over losing the only thing that should have mattered to him, the tears reminding him that in the end, he has no one to blame but himself.

 

Sherlock questions how he could have ever thought he didn't have a heart.

Because now it twists viciously inside of him, and he knows it is drowning.

 

Drowning in memories of John.

 

****

 

_I don't have friends..._

 

_**I'm just your friend....** _

 

_**SHERLOCK!** _

 

_This is my friend, John Watson._

 

_**Colleague.** _

 

_**You Machine!** _

 

_John...._


	4. Epilogue~ Heart Light as Air

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter. Thank you all so much :) Many thanks to avidityfire for the inspiration, and I hope you all enjoyed.

 

 

_I can breathe, Water...._

 

_When you're here with me,_

_You're not here, with me.~ Iko,Heart Of Stone_

 

 

 

It seems to Sherlock that it only began at the moment he saw John strapped to tonnes of semtex in a dark pool. He can pinpoint the exact moment, actually if he tries. It's the moment he saw what John was going to do to protect him, the moment in which Sherlock was forced to aim his gun at not only Moriarty, but the man he had so recently only come to recognise as a friend.

 

He wonders if that wasn't the beginning of the end for him, for all of this. Wonders even as he lies still in the quiet of the flat, empty of John and empty of Mary, the newly-weds having picked out a new home. He hadn't bothered to remember its address, it was unimportant. Unnecessary. Sherlock doesn't want to know. At least he tells himself that, even as he stares fixedly up at the ceiling, counting the pock-marks and burns that litter it. Some from experiments, others from accidents. Even a few he cannot identify. He tries to gather where they might have come from, but his mind inevitably refuses to cooperate, drawing itself irrevocably towards the memories he so desperately is trying to ignore. A part of Sherlock wonders if deleting John Watson might not just be easier, but the thought alone sends an unfamiliar pain ricocheting through him like lightning.

 

His brain does not want to forget. His heart does not want to not remember.

It would rather suffer in agony than even consider the possibility of forgetting one John Watson.

And if that isn't the final proof to Sherlock that  _love_ is a stupid and painful emotion, then he doesn't know what is. Rolling over, he closes his eyes. But Sherlock doesn't sleep.

He can't.

 

Not when there's a loneliness seeping through his blood like fire, and a heartbeat pounding away into the deafening silence that is the absence of his one and only best friend.

 

****

John presses a kiss to Mary's lips, tasting on her the flavour of her favourite lipstick and the morning's tea. His tie is only somewhat straight against his neck, the rush of early morning causing him to not bother with righting it even as he grabs his Thermos and prepares to head out to his job. Mary smiles at him from where she leans against the counter, munching on a piece of toast as she too prepares. She's being called in late, so she doesn't have to show up at the office until noon. John envies her, if only because he feels as though he hasn't slept in a year.

 

Lately his nightmares have been worse. Senseless things, full of mindless images and melding faces.

He tries to pretend he doesn't know which face haunts him the most.

 

He hasn't seen Sherlock since that glimpse of him at the wedding. No phone calls, no letters, no texts. Occasionally, John catches a glimpse of the detective's name in the papers, but that is no replacement for the man's actual voice.

 

He tried calling, once.

 

Message machine, coldly telling him that if was Mycroft to  _Piss off._ John hadn't left a message, his throat too tight to do so. Instead he had merely hung up the phone and wandered off to get his mind to stop thinking about Sherlock Holmes.

 

John still visits his therapist. She tells him he's doing well.

 

He wonders then why he still feels a familiar stab of pain as he walks past the photograph mantled on the wall, and why it feels as if his breathing's gone funny when Mary looks at him in accusation.

 

She knows.

 

It's only a matter of time, but she knows.

 

Somehow though, John can't bring himself to just admit it. So he doesn't talk about it. Not unless he has to.

 

Mum's the word, save for the piano notes playing maliciously inside his own head.

 

****

The needle feels cold in Sherlock's hands.

His heart feels colder.

 

His thoughts race as he aligns it with the crook of his arm, fingers tapping restlessly against the clear plastic. He hears them screaming in his head, but they are not his own mind. Its the voice of someone else he hears.

 

_**Danger night.** _

His brother sighs.

**This man, a junkie?**

 

John scoffs. Then, Greg Lestrade.

_It's a drugs bust._

 

Normally, he might have called someone. Well, might have called one person.

 

But John is busy.

John doesn't care.

And Sherlock, Sherlock is tired of being a nuisance to the one person he cares about most of all. His lips draw themselves into a thin line, and he unwillingly remembers the army doctor's soft voice.

 

**I'm your friend.**

 

No.

Not any more.

But the detective should have known. After all, who could really bear to be friends with Sherlock Holmes?

His thoughts stutter, jeer at him. Call him using the voice that will torment him the most. His Mind-Palace curls and folds into itself, layer upon layer. Padded cells all lined in a row, boxing him inside.

 

Then, Sherlock refuses to think at all.

 

****

John is given the call halfway through his break. Sarah's mousy-brown head pops into his office, her mouth a thin line of discontent. Upon seeing her face, John's heart immediately plummets into his gut. He feels as though he can't breathe, like ice has driven itself deep into his spine. His voice is weak.

 

“Oh God, what's wrong?”

 

By way of answer, Sarah responds.

“It's his brother.”

 

It takes John a second to realise what that means.

Who she means.

_No._

 

And John is reaching for the phone, fingers curling about its edges desperately as his voice cracks as it demands answers.

“Mycroft, what's happened?”

 

The elder Holmes' voice is crisp, cool. Yet there is an underlying tone in it, something dangerous and acidic.

“Careful Mr. Watson, you almost sound like you care.”

 

John's jaw tightens, and he has to bite his lip to keep the fiery-hot retort from leaving his lips. He knows he deserves it. He's been avoiding all of them since the wedding. Any one to do with his ex-flatmate, his.... with Sherlock. When he speaks, his voice is strained and low.

“If you are trying to gain a sense of humour I assure you-”

 

“No joke, just that my brother was found in his flat completely high and babbling something about the state of his heart and his head. Nasty business really, but then again I suppose he learned all about emotions and what they can do to a person from the best.”

 

John feels his heart thud heavily in his chest, pounding tightly like a skein stretched thin over a drum. He struggles to keep his voice even as Sarah excuses herself, closing his office door with a  _click_ as he lowers his breath to a hiss of contempt.

“Don't you think it's a bit ironic that you're judging  _me_ for my  _emotional_ turmoil Mycroft?” He spits, bracing his arm against the wall as he struggles to take deep breaths. Oh God. Sherlock.  _Sherlock Sherlock  Sherlock._

 

And John can barely see through the red haze that is his fury, can't stand to think through the shaking in his very bones.

“ _What was he thinking?!?!”_  He shouts into the phone before he can stop himself, and bites against the knuckles of his hand to keep himself from screaming further. John has to tell himself it's not Mycroft's fault, that none of this affects the elder Holmes except provide minor inconvenience and further strain relationship with his brother. He is likely just as angry as John is, although the man's voice is far more calm and detached than the army doctor's. Mycroft's tone is even as he speaks, but now the sarcasm is relevant, seeping through the voice dryly as John catches his breath.

 

“I'm sure I have  _no_ idea, save for the fact that he's barely been out of the flat over the course of nearly two months. But you wouldn't know that John, would you? You haven't even visited Mrs. Hudson in that length of time.” His voice is cutting, and John's face twists in rage as he reacts like a volcano erupting under his skin.

 

“ _I wouldn't know because he won't talk to me Mycroft! I've tried, I've  **tried** to contact him. But he's never home when I try to visit, he doesn't answer his bleeding  **phone!** I've all but tried to stalk him to get his attention, and he refuses to be found!”_

 

Before the doctor quite realises it, he can feel tears burning in the back of his eyelids, and he resolutely forces them away. His growl is feral as he smacks his head against the wall in defeat, rubbing at the bridge of his nose as he allows his helplessness to seep through the line.

Small and fragile.

“He doesn't want... He doesn't want to be found Mycroft. Not by me. He.... I....  _we_ ruined everything between us. It's over....  _I tried._ ”

 

And silence fell between the two men, heavy and thick. The elder Holmes' voice was subdued when he spoke again, and it was like rain falling down a window pane. Mycroft's tone was slightly less acerbic.

 

“John.... Has it ever occurred to you... That Sherlock might think you don't  _want_ him around?”

 

The army doctor's voice is low, rough with pain.

“Every single day of my life. I told him... I said such  _terrible_ things.... And there's.... there's no fixing this... God....” John doesn't care that he's crying now into the palm of his hand, shoulders shaking. He's never had much pride around Mycroft anyway. Instead, he pictures chasing after Sherlock, the man's coattails flying behind him. He remembers being spun by those large, warm hands.

 

John remembers laughing, and looking into those blue-green eyes, and he remembers happiness.

 

And all of it, all of it, is now tinged with the bitter taste of regret.

Like a cold frost, killing everything in its path.

 

****

 

Ella looks at him calmly as John speaks, hands clasped loosely between his knees. She doesn't interrupt him. Doesn't tell him off. Doesn't tell him his feelings are wrong.

 

Strangely, it strengthens him.

John finds himself filling with a weak and fragile warmth.

It takes him a moment to recognise it for what it is.

 

Then, he laughs.

 

Trust Sherlock bloody Holmes of all people to instil  _hope_ back inside him.

 

****

“John.”

 

She says evenly, blonde braids glittering in the morning sunlight. Mary is beautiful, all soft angles and deep blue eyes. Her lips however are not smiling. John doesn't blame her. They both know what's going to happen.

 

“Mary.” He whispers, staring into the golden liquid to his tea. It's hot in his hands. Strangely, John finds he doesn't much mind. The burning sensation, it feels like he deserves it.

 

If only because what Mary says next is absolute truth.

 

“You're unhappy with us.” She states, then blinks away the tears forming in the corner of her eyes. Ever so strong. Ever so lovely and brave. John hates that he's doing this to her, it makes him feel like the lowest of the low. However, Mary doesn't give him time to packpedal, doesn't give him time to deny. Her words are firm and steady, as unyielding as the till of a sail. And in her gaze is forgiveness, despite the echoes of pain.

 

“You're unhappy with us.... Because I'm not him.”

 

And she tucks one of her lovely braids behind her ear and smiles, and it is a watery thing. The smile is crooked, so like Sherlock's. Yet not the same. John rises, feeling the urge to comfort tug in his chest, but his wife backs away, a hand held up in gentle refusal. Mary refuses to drop her gaze, features soft and sad but at the same time, so happy. Happy for him, and it's because even now, she loves John.

 

And he loves Mary, John realises. Just not the way she wishes he did.

 

Her voice is sweet and truthful.

“Be happy John. Find him.... be happy for me.”

 

And Mary slowly approaches, wrapping her arms around her husband's frame. When she draws away, her wedding ring is in her outstretched hand. John's chest feels tight, but he also feels something loosen considerably within his spine when she places the piece of jewellery in his palm.

 

Mrs. Watson no more, Mary Morstan whispers goodbye.

 

And all John can see is himself and another man running in the dark, hand in hand. Handcuffed from the start.

And he wonders to himself, if they ever did find the key, or if they've been connected all along.

 

****

He quits work.

Leaves the new house.

Becomes all but homeless in his search for Sherlock Holmes.

The great detective has fallen off the map, but John is strong and sure. He refuses to give up, even when the network that Sherlock has so painstakingly created refuses to give him information.

 

Even when he is sitting, cold and alone in a silent church, trying to catch some warmth from winter.

 

John's never been a terribly religious man, although once when he was about to die, he prayed to God.

 

 

Still, he finds himself kneeling. The stubble he's acquired over the past weeks is already thick on his face and prickled and it scratches as he ducks his head and closes his eyes.

The church smells of incense, of quiet and safety. No one is around.

 

Eyes closed, John wishes for those dark curls, that crinkled laugh, and for the warmth at his side to for once not be imagined.

 

 

****

The detective watches him from afar. Except he doesn't look like Sherlock Holmes. His hair is blonde for one, badly dyed, and his skin is paler. Sallow. He stands in a simple hoodie and Jeans, face pinched and stubble on his cheeks. But still, those eyes are the same.

 

He watches John Watson and wonders, wonders why he keep searching. Even as he wonders, his fingers grip the crook of his arm. Pin-pricks line the inside. He asks himself what John would say, if he could see him like this.

 

Chances are, Sherlock doesn't want to hear it.

But he has no choice, no say as John suddenly spins, staring at him with wide, huge eyes.

 

And then the army doctor lunges, right before Sherlock tries to leap away, and his grip is like iron but twice as warm and unyielding.

 

 

****

Sherlock's body is thin.

Painfully so.

 

John cradles it in his arms fiercely, nose burrowed in the crook of the man's neck in as much an effort to restrain as it is to memorize every line of him. At first Sherlock is trying to fight him, to pull away and flee. Then those arms fall slack slowly, and John is at once surprised and relieved when the detective's hands come to grip his waist and the back of his head.

 

Neither of them are surprised when they realise the other is crying.

But both are shocked when John whispers

 

“I love you.”

And Sherlock's entire body shudders in relief.

 

And both of their heavy hearts, though bruised and battered, are lifted somehow. No longer drowning, but held afloat by each other's hands as neither of them allow the other to let go.


End file.
